Here's a piece he did for ESPN challenging the narrative of decline in English football.
So the first point to make about the failure of the 2014 campaign is that progress into the last 16 would probably have necessitated one of England's most impressive World Cup results, a win over either Uruguay or Italy in the group stage, two teams they have never beaten in the finals of any tournament. And as nobody believed that we were going to Brazil with one of England's most impressive teams, it was baffling to listen to the "realists" predicting exit in the quarterfinals. How were we supposed to get even that far?
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Yes never be glib about Hornby and Hornbyization. I like him, he's good and we owe him a lot. He essentially translated football into middle-class language and opened up the game to a lot of people who used to be really snobbish about it, and by extension, the working-class people who liked it.
I'm not sure the effects of middle-class attention to football have been that negative. Gentrification is the production of space for the affluent, but when you are talking about a cultural or mental space, there is less of a displacement effect. Obviously people are being priced out of actually seeing top football in person, and I've heard old school Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal fans complaining how little atmosphere there is at home games. Fuck, I even felt that myself on the 5 or 6 times I've been to Stamford Bridge - there were loads of tourists around me who may as well have been at the Lion King or whatever the fuck.
But looking at the big picture, I'm not sure it's the middle-class intelligentsia, the football hipster, that is solely responsible for driving this. Maybe we were the link to bring corporate money in, the prawn sandwich brigade? I don't know. Fever Pitch was published in 1992, when the Premiership was founded. Big money was already mobilising around the game - we'd just had 13 years of Thatcherism, there were plenty of culturally working class people around who were loaded. The early joke when BSkyB came out was that you only saw satellite dishes, ostensibly a luxury good, in the rougher parts of town. All-seater stadia killed some of the atmosphere but you can't pin that on us. The Bosman ruling, which eroded the "local link" between fans and players, wasn't our fault.
Space to consume, enjoy and discuss football is far less limited than, say, SE London housing stock. I'm not sure football really has been "gentrified" that much, in the sense of people being pushed out (other than a few of the very top clubs). And where they have been priced out, I'm not sure it's by people brought in by Hornby. From personal experience, we're more likely to be supporting lower league football or catching games abroad than paying through the nose for Prem matches.
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